Laura Muir wins the women’s 1500m final at the 2017 European Indoor Championships in Belgrade, where she also finished first in the 3,000m.
Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images

The last time Laura Muir raced at a major championships in Glasgow, the hype and hope weighed her down like an anvil. Now, five years on from flopping at the Commonwealth Games, Muir is relishing the chance to make history at the European Indoor Championships.

If all goes to plan the 25-year-old will claim 3,000m gold on Friday night and then rapidly follow it up with a 1500m title on Sunday – an achievement that would not only repeat her success in Belgrade two years ago but also make her the first person, male or female, to ever achieve a “double-double” at these championships.

“Five years ago I struggled with pressure quite a lot,” admitted Muir, who finished 11th in the 1500m before pulling out of the 800m. “I just got really nervous and found that I didn’t race very well. Now I have psychologically flipped things and it has worked really well. I had a lot of pressure for Berlin last year for the outdoors but I dealt with that fine and came away with the win. So coming into Glasgow I feel more relaxed and more excited than anything.”

Not that it will be easy given that the German Konstanze Klosterhalfen, who has kicked on impressively since joining Alberto Salazar’s Nike Oregon Project group, is lurking in the 3,000m. To add to Muir’s challenge, she also has to race in the heats of the 1500m two and a half hours’ before the 3,000m.

However, the Scot is confident of rising to the challenge. “We would only do it if I was fit enough to do it,” she said. “I don’t want to go out there and do a mediocre performance. I want to go out there and smash it.”

Her coach, Andy Young, meanwhile, bills the 3,000m final as the race of the championships. “It’s an absolutely epic race, like Mary Decker-Slaney v Zola Budd in the 80s,” he says, with a smile. “Let’s just hope it ends better than it did for those two in 1984.”

Muir proved her form a fortnight ago by smashing the British indoor mile record by more than five seconds, but there were suggestions afterwards that her racing spikes may have been a prototype and thus illegal. Young, however, dismissed it as “a bit of a “non-story. The last time I checked there was no complaint.

“We brought them in for training rather than racing, but she liked them,” he added, pointing out that other athletes had worn the same-type spikes last summer. “I think she could have run near enough in high heels in Birmingham and it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

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With Muir primed for success, the British team are hopeful of exceeding the 10 medals they won at this event in Belgrade in 2017, and they should get a second gold on the opening night with Katarina Johnson-Thompson an overwhelming favourite in the women’s pentathlon.

It helps the Briton’s case that the reigning champion, Nafi Thiam, is absent with a calf injury. However Johnson-Thompson, who believes she is in the best condition of her career, lamented the opportunity to put one over her great Belgium rival. “I’m sad she’s not here,” she said. “I love competing against her. I love the battle of it. I think she brings out the best in me.”

Elsewhere Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the brilliant teenage Norwegian, is favourite to win gold in the men’s 1500m and 3000m, while the German pole vaulter Katha Bauer will become the first athlete to compete in a major championships with a defibrillator, which she had fitted last year, although she is unlikely to win a medal.

However, the British team captain, Guy Learmonth, who is competing with a broken finger and badly bruised ribs sustained at the Birmingham grand prix two weeks ago, believes he can overcome his own medical problems in the men’s 800m. “If I break my hand in the process of winning, I won’t care,” he said.